CRASH ON THE SUBWAY: THE OVERVIEW; 2 Subway Trains Crash on Williamsburg Bridge

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A Manhattan-bound subway train driven by a motorman on his final run of an overnight shift slammed into the rear of another train stopped on the Williamsburg Bridge yesterday morning, killing the motorman, injuring more than 50 passengers and crumpling tons of steel like so much wadded paper.

It was the fourth time in less than two years that a subway train has run into the back of another, raising questions about whether the safeguards built into the aging system are sufficient.

"Rear-end collisions aren't supposed to happen and something has gone wrong, either with the system we have out there or the human performance we're supposed to have," said Robert Lauby, chief of the railroad division of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash.

Local, state and Federal investigators were trying to determine yesterday whether the signals -- a system based on 75-year-old technology that is supposed to keep two trains a safe distance apart -- worked properly, or whether the motorman who was killed went through a red light.

Even if there was a malfunction, officials said that at 6:15 A.M., well past sunrise, on a straight track up the slope of the bridge on the Brooklyn side, the motorman of the second train, a J train, should have been able to see the stopped M train in front of him from hundreds of feet away, with time to stop. "He had to have seen it," said Alan F. Kiepper, president of the Transit Authority. "It was clearly visible."

The crash shattered the morning routines of about 200 commuters, many of whom were thrown to the floor, and thrust them instead into a scene where rescue workers, with flashing red lights painting their faces, used ladders and stretchers to lower injured and shaken riders from the trains to the roadbed below [ Page B4 ] .

The wrecked trains halted service on the J, M and Z subway lines, and the rescue effort, involving hundreds of police officers, firefighters and Emergency Medical Service workers, closed the bridge to cars for six hours. Ripple effects were felt by Monday morning commuters throughout much of Brooklyn and Queens.

The force of the crash lifted the last car of the M train two feet off its carriage, splintered the floors and chairs of the two cars that bore the brunt of the impact and littered their floors with the shards of shattered windows. The front wall of the J train was smashed inward 8 to 10 feet, crushing the 46-year-old motorman, Layton Gibson, of Seaford, L.I., in his cab. Rescue workers, who were able to get to him only after 20 minutes of hacking away at the steel that bound him in place, pronounced him dead at the scene and said that he almost certainly died instantly.

It appeared from an examination of the J train that the brakes were not applied before impact, said Jerry Shook, chief of rail safety for the State Public Transportation Safety Board.

Henry Simon, a 28-year-old truck driver, said that as he rode in the first car of Mr. Gibson's train, it appeared to have a close call several minutes before the accident. He said the train was forced to stop abruptly near Myrtle Avenue in Queens, where the J and M lines meet, because it was too close to the M train in front of it -- the same train it later hit.

Passengers aboard the M train, an eight-car string of R-42 model cars that were built in 1968 and 1969, and rebuilt from 1987 to 1989, said the train came to a halt before reaching the crest of the bridge. An announcement was made that they were stopped at a red signal, and about 30 seconds later came a sharp jolt.

Chris Youngling, 19, of Glendale, Queens, was standing in the last car of the M train, on his way to his first day at a job installing air conditioners. "I went flying right across the floor," said Mr. Youngling, who was left with bruises and scratches on his arms and legs. "The whole thing caved in."

Fifty people were taken to hospitals after the crash, the city's worst subway accident since five people were killed and 200 injured when a drunken motorman crashed his speeding train into a wall near Union Square in 1991. Four others who were injured declined to go, according to the E.M.S.

Most of the injuries were not considered serious, officials said, though last night, two people were listed in stable condition at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center.

"It's really, I think, almost unbelievable that there wasn't more in the way of injuries," Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said after viewing the mangled trains.

Transit officials said they could not immediately determine how fast the J train was going when it hit the M train. But they said the damage to the two trains was comparable to that done in a Feb. 9 accident in Brooklyn, when a train going about 25 miles an hour hit another train that was standing still.

Mr. Gibson had an average record in his 14 years as a motorman, the last six of which he had spent on the J line, said Robert Slovak, a Transit Authority spokesman. He said Mr. Gibson had three minor operating violations on his record, and one two-day suspension, in 1991, for stopping a train short of the proper spot.

After two days off, he started his last shift at 11:38 P.M. Sunday, driving an eight-car train of R-40 model cars, built in 1969 and 1970, and rebuilt in 1988 and 1989. He was making his final trip into Manhattan and was scheduled to get off work at 7:24 A.M. yesterday, after a return trip to the end of the line at Jamaica, Queens.

James E. Hall, chairman of the Federal safety board, said determining the cause of the crash would be slow. "The wreckage, as you can imagine, it's hard to tell anything from," he said.

Mr. Kiepper of the Transit Authority said recent accidents point up the weakness of a signaling system that operates largely on technology three-quarters of a century old. "We have a manual system which depends largely on train operators obeying the rules," he said, while more modern systems are computerized and can automatically slow or stop a train when it gets too close to another.

The Transit Authority and the state and Federal safety boards will be looking at the signal system, which on the bridge and its approaches dates from 1918. Subway tracks are divided into sections, or blocks, between signals, and the signals are supposed to prevent two trains from occupying the same block. Before it began to climb the bridge, the J train passed through a signal, entering the same block as the M train.

If the signal system was working properly, the presence of the M train should have given the J train a red light. Transit officials said they were trying to determine whether the system worked properly. Other motormen on the J line said that they did not know of a signal malfunction there, but that the red lights were sometimes hard to see.

Usually, if a train goes through a red light, a switch on the track triggers the train's brakes. But at many signals, it is possible for a motorman to "key by" the red signal, or go through it at less than five miles an hour, without tripping the brakes. Motormen are supposed to get permission by radio from their dispatchers before making the maneuver.

Joseph Hofmann, the senior vice president of the Transit Authority in charge of the subway system, said he could not determine yesterday whether the signal the J train passed was one where a red light could be bypassed.

The signals in the area of the accident are scheduled for replacement in 1997, but with signals no more modern than the current ones.

Computerized signals, which Mr. Kiepper said would improve safety, are being designed for a small portion of the system. He said the cost of installing them citywide would exceed $20 billion.

In the last rear-end subway accident, on Feb. 9 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, transit officials concluded that the motorman of an empty M train keyed by a signal, rounded a sharp curve and slammed into a stopped B train. The motorman and six people on the B train had minor injuries.

The Federal safety board has not completed its investigation into that accident, and officials are considering combining that inquiry with the one into yesterday's accident.

A work train rear-ended another work train on the IRT at Prospect Avenue in the Bronx on Sept. 28 last year, but transit officials said they did not know the details of that incident.

On Oct. 7, 1993, an L train rear-ended another L train at Graham Avenue in Brooklyn, injuring 45 people. Transit officials determined that the motorman of the trailing train keyed by a red light.

Before that, there had not been an accident involving two trains since 1981.

An official with the Federal safety board said one possibility it would examine was whether the work under way since 1988 to renovate the 92-year-old bridge somehow disabled a signal.

Transit officials said they had not ruled out the possibility that the motorman of the J train was somehow incapacitated before the accident. A motorman moves a train by holding down a spring-loaded lever, so that if pressure on the lever is released, the train comes to a stop. The system is meant to prevent a train from continuing if its motorman has collapsed.

The Chief Medical Examiner's office performed an autopsy on the body of Mr. Gibson, the motorman, to determine, if possible, what condition he was in just before the accident, and whether he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. No results were available yesterday.